1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to data transmission and particularly to data streaming.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data streaming usually refers to a high data rate transmission of, for example, video or multimedia data. Data streaming may also be applied to a digital broadcasting transmission or some other massive data transfer from a server. In data streaming, the data transfer takes continuously place without an observable time lag.
Typically, the data streams are encoded by the server and the data stream is decoded by the client. However, processing of the received data stream is a complex task, and scheduling may even take up to 80% of the power and time of the operation of the processor in the client. Particularly, if the client is a handheld device, such as a mobile terminal, processing of the data stream may become a severe burden.
Some ways to mitigate the problem have been proposed and developed. Generally, the coding methods can be made easier for the client to decode the data stream. In a similar manner, computing architectures of the client have been developed in order to relieve scheduling. Also batteries for a portable client have been improved to feed power for the increased power consumption due to higher efficiency.
However, since the amount of data keeps increasing with the data rates and variety of encoding methods, the client faces an ever deteriorating situation with the processing of the data despite the known stages of development. Hence, the client is not able to achieve a good enough efficiency.